Month: March 1999

Some of you are doubtless wondering, “How long is a ‘Turn’?” It does seem an arbitrary unit of time, especially considering the wide variety of choices we have available to us: cycles, quelnars, microns, months, et cetera.

Those few of you familiar with celestial mathematics and temporal relativity may be able to pose an educated guess as to the reason, that given the interactions between (more…)

Greetings, students. In case you missed the previous lesson, I am Elder Kh’preng, Servant of the Web, former envoy of the Crystal Confederation, and your instructor in this series of introductory classes on the science of the Nu Era. Again, I’d like to remind you of my policy, that questions are not permitted during class. If you wish to ask me something in private, just pass through the web outside my office door during the posted hours.

Perhaps the most confusing aspect of warfare in the Echo Cluster, at least to atmospheric pilots, is that interplanetary travel is represented two-dimensionally (more…)

One of the most difficult things for new commanders is learning to fight within the constraints that have been established over the years, the limitations that make for efficient warfare. It never fails but that warriors are disappointed to learn that neither carrier nor starbase can control more than nineteen fighters at any given moment. And, more often than not, they rage against this apparently arbitrary limit without stopping to consider that this limit and, indeed, every limit exists for a purpose, that there’s always at least one logical reason. (more…)